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Craft skill
Listed below are the available craft options: Alchemy Armorsmithing Basketweaving Boatbuilding (for Huge size and smaller) Bookbinding Bowmaking Blacksmithing Calligraphy (Forgery) Carpentry Cobbling Composing (Perform - Instrument) Gemcutting Glassblowing Jewelry Leatherworking Locksmithing (Open Lock) Painting Playwright (Perform - Acting) Poisonmaking Pottery Ropemaking (Rope Use) Sculpting Stonemasonry Tatoo'ing Trapmaking (Trap Sense) Weaponsmithing Weaving Wordsmithing (Perform - Comedy) Special: There are a variety of synergy bonuses that a character can gain through the craft skill. Listed above, next to the type of craft, are any skills in which the character receives a synergy bonus when they have 5 or more ranks in the craft. In some cases, the synergy may not be to another skill, but to an ability. Note that for all crafts, a synergy bonus to the Appraise skill for the appropriate craft applies. Making Money With Craft The D&D 3.5E rules contain mechanics for earning money as a skilled worker, using Craft or Profession skills. For the most part, these are simple and straightforward - make a skill check representing a week's effort, earn half the check result in gold. Not too shabby. It's also possible, though, to use the Craft ability to directly produce items - items which can, among other uses, be sold for money. The mechanics for this are more complex overall, with skill checks being compared to DC ratings and the item's final value to determine 'progress', but fortunately can be made somewhat simpler over the long run with a couple of basic assumptions: 1. A character with a Craft skill can guarantee a steady level of performance by always choosing to take 10. We'll assume this is done. 2. A character maximizes their crafting output, over the long term, by producing items with a craft DC exactly equal to their skill check rating (as determined above). Again, we'll assume this is done. 3. By the letter of the crafting rules, crafting efforts proceed until the item's final value has been accumulated; any excess is apparently lost. For long-term crafting, we'll relax this rule, and allow excess to carry over to making a second copy of a similar item. This means that the full value of a week's work crafting can count as wages. With the above three assumptions, it's possible to determine the wage value of Crafting items for money: Check ^ 2)/10 * (2/3) if we assume the crafted item can be sold for full list price, or Check ^ 2)/10 * (1/6) if the item must be sold for half list price. This is somewhat more complex than the simpler (Skill Check / 2), but not unbearably so. What does this mean? First, the exponential growth of 'Craft and sell' makes it more profitable than 'Craft for wages' for high skill values. If an item can be crafted and then sold at full list price, then ueveryone/u will choose to 'craft and sell' - even the amateurs with a +0 skill rating (taking 10 to get a check result of, well, 10) will earn 6 and a half gold by making some 10 gp widget and selling it, rather than 5 gold working for someone else. Common sense bids to reject this possibility outright, but the fact that anyone can sell trade goods at the full list price drives a nail into *that* coffin. For those items that must be sold for half its list price, a skill check result of at least 30 is needed to make 'craft for sale' better than 'craft for wages'. Assuming use of Skill Focus, positive attribute rankings, masterwork tools, and other bonuses, this still likely requires 10 to 12 ranks in a skill - master-level proficiency, in other words. This is quite a bit better than the earlier case, and probably suitable as a general 'across the board' standard... but does require that anything that counts as a 'trade good' be uncraftable - which is a weird situation in and of itself. The second interesting feature of 'craft for sale' is that as the skill check result rises, the value of additional bonuses (that further boost the check result) increase even faster. A character who normally has a craft check result of 20 could 'craft and sell' producing 40 gp of trade goods per week; an additional +1 bonus on top of this raises the result to 44.1 gp. For a craft check result of 30, though, the normal production rate is 90 gp/week, and a +1 bonus in this instance provides 96.1 gp of production. As a result, paying for special bonuses becomes more and more feasible as Craft skill ratings go up. A few examples: - Guidance, as a 0-level spell, costs 5 gp to get a +1 skill check bonus. This becomes economical once craft check ratings exceed 25. - Aid Another requires getting a 10 on a skill check to provide a +2 skill bonus; taking 10 isn't allowed in this case. The odds are difficult to calculate, but if we assume that the value of working for a wage is 5 gp normally, and Aiding Another has a 50% chance of success, then hiring an assistant for this sort of activity becomes economical when craft check ratings exceed 24. (This is in theory only - the fact that the Aid Another bonus can't be counted on does mess with our Assumption #2. But a +2 bonus does provide value increasing geometrically with the value of the primary participant's skill, even if it doesn't realize exponential growth.) - Magic items that provide competence bonuses become more and more feasible as base skill ranks increase. The math involved is too complex to examine each individual case, but looking at a couple of possibilities, the following results appear: * A custom magic item that provides a +10 bonus, once per day, costs 2,000 gp. In the hands of a crafter with a base check result of 30, craft rate goes from 90 gp/week to 160 gp/week. If our crafter's making trade goods, the item pays for itself in less than a year; for non-trade good items, it takes about three years to make up the item's cost. After that point, the magic item is pure profit. * An item that provides a +30 bonus (the maximum under the rules), once per day, costs 18,000 gp. In the hands of a master crafter with a base check result of 45, crafting ability skyrockets from a normal production rate of 202.5 gp/week up to 562.5 gp/week! It takes a year and a half to pay off the cost of such an item assuming trade goods are being made, about six years of effort otherwise. A moderate amount of calculus could probably be applied to determine a 'marginal cost' function for crafting bonuses, given the game rules for 'craft and sell', but suffice it to say that such planning and forethought is possible. Do the Crafting rules really make sense, in a campaigning sense? Probably not - the idea that prices are fixed by an outside authority, and determine the value (and from value, likely availability) of labor is counterintuitive and ridiculous. It does make the game simpler, though, and the best overall reconciliation is to tweak the crafting mechanics so that the value of labor lists the prices in the book. Every 3 points of DC takes 1 day. For every 6 points you excede the DC it drops the time needed by 1 day to a minimum of 1. Masterwork and other such additions add to the orginal DC. Making Craft Work Every Craft attempt is defined by two elements: the time required and the DC. The time required to craft an item is influenced not by an item's price in silver pieces, but rather by its complexity. The DC is likewise influenced by item complexity. Complexity Time Unit Modifier Very simple 8 hours +0 Simple 2 days +2 Moderate 4 days +4 Complex 1 week +8 Very complex 2 weeks +10 Time Unit: This columns tells you how long must be spent working before a Craft check is permitted. DC Modifier: This modifier is added to base DC 10 of all Craft checks. Item Complexity The complexity categories listed on the table above require some defining. Keep in mind that there is a certain amount of subjectivity at work here.3 The key to item complexity isn't to rely an exhaustive list of what items belong to which categories. Instead, these rules provide basic category descriptions and a few examples of sorts of items one might expect to fit each respective category. *Very Simple: These items are more or less all one piece or one material of simple shape with no moving parts. Examples: crowbar, quarterstaff. Simple: A simple item is largely made of one material, but it requires a more specialized shape. Examples: many simple weapons, backpack, most common articles of clothing, simple traps such as pits. *Moderate: Moderate complexity items are characterized by diverse materials or different parts that must be integrated into a whole. Examples: Most martial and exotic weapons, bows, all shields, locks, simple traps using simple mechanical triggers, acid. *Complex: Complex items have diverse materials, moving parts, different parts, and/or decorative bits. Examples: Most types of armor, strength bows, crossbows, most vehicles (excluding large ocean-going vessels), alchemist's fire, smokesticks, tingertwigs. *Very Complex: These are the most complicated items. They require diverse materials, moving parts, different parts, decorated bits, and/or multiple functions or uses. Examples: ocean-going vessels, unusual armors (such as barding), antitoxins, tanglefoot bags, sunrods, thunderstones. *Masterwork Items A masterwork item has a 50% increase in time unit (in addition to the normal increase in cost). For example, a longsword is a moderately complex item with a time unit of 4 days. Thus, a masterwork longsword has a time unit of 6 days. Furthermore, any masterwork item has its Craft DC increased by +4. Thus, the masterwork longsword faces a DC 18 Craft check4. Special Materials A craftsman working with an unusual material (such as adamantine) faces a 50% increase in time unit, which stacks with the 50% increase in time unit associated with masterwork items when applicable. For example, an adamantine masterwork longsword has a time unit of 8 days. Also, unusual materials are harder to work with and increase the item's DC as shown below: 3 It was suggested to me that item size adjust time for crafting. This makes sense. Certainly, a very large object could be reasonably expected to take longer to craft than a smaller item. At the same time, a very small item also might be more difficult. This suggestion has merit, but, unfortunately, the game system doesn't account for item sizes well. If you, the DM, feel an item's size ought to influence how long it takes to craft, increase the time unit by, say, 25-50% (or more). Just be consistent and up front about these modifiers. I was trying to overhaul Craft skills, too, because of the Fabricate power/spell (which in its written form lets you make Crafted items instantly). The problem was, well, look at swords. A masterwork one is DC 20. So, thanks to that spell, I could take a block of Adamantite and instantly make a nice sword just by Taking 10, if I had enough skill ranks to get a +10 bonus. Or Mithril, or Flowstone, or Gartine, or whatever other material you can think of, it's all DC 20. I don't think the problem is crafting time, it's that the core rules don't handle exotic materials well. On this board about a year ago, we came up with a nice system for materials. Basically, each type of metal had its own DC modifier, cost multiplier, etc. Let's say I wanted to make a Mithril Longsword. Take the base DC for the sword (let's say 17; use the numbers in the PHB but tweak a few), add the Mithril DC modifier (+6), and it's now DC 23. Mithril might have a Cost Multiplier of 30, so now you can use the existing rules. "Masterwork" can either be just a name for anything Fine Steel or better, or you could add it as a Quality modifier (DC+3, cost higher) and say that magical items need Masterwork Quality. Complex stuff But you were also talking about more complex stuff, like Shipbuilding. There, I think the solution is just a lot of synergy bonuses. Craft: Tailor? Sure, also carpenter or blacksmith. Profession: Sailor, Knowledge: Engineering, whatever you can reasonably justify as being useful. If they have 1-3 ranks give them a +1, if they have 4-9 give a +2, 10 or more gives a +3. It'll add up. Notes *Valuable Raw Materials Aren’t Valuable: This is a part of the rules that makes me cry. Since the amount of value you make each day is based on the difficulty of working the material and not on the value of said material, there is no way for a goldsmith to stay in business. Gold is very easy to work and therefore the DC to work it is very low, and therefore a goldsmith makes very little in the way of finished product each week. A five pound gold candle holder is roughly four ounces and fits into the palm of your hand, but it’ll take a master goldsmith (+10 Craft Bonus) almost a year to finish one (500 gp value, at DC 5 = 50 weeks). *The Costs of Materials are WHAT? Remember that five pound gold candle holder? It’s worth 500 gp and therefore requires 167 gp worth of materials to make it. But it’s worth 250 gp just as a lump of gold. So you can buy things as raw materials and sell them as trade goods and make lots of money. The reverse happens when you make complex or finely worked items. A masterwork sword is made out of pretty much the same materials as a normal sword and is much more expensive because it’s better made. But because the higher quality crafting will make it sell for more down the line, the cost of the materials goes up by a 100 gp. Where does that money go? What are you getting for 2 pounds of gold? Sure, maybe you get some better coal or something, but really, that doesn’t even begin to cover it. *Field Fortifications Cannot Happen: Even the simplest of traps (such as a bucket with some acid in it balanced on a partially open door) has a cost that is very high – in the hundreds of gp. That means even the most gifted craftsman is going to take weeks to boobytrap a room or lay down some field fortifications. When longbowmen want to hammer some stakes into the ground to protect themselves from the knight stampede that’s going to come when the battle starts, the Craft rules essentially tell them that they can’t do it. Which for those of us who have seen Henry V, seems unlikely. *Risky and Illegal Trades are Pointless: Some products are expensive because producing them is risky (poison, flower arrangements from the Bane Mires). Some products are expensive because their production and sale is in some manner restricted by the authorities (shrunken dwarf heads, disrespectful puppets of the king). In the real world, people produce these things because they can charge inflated prices because of the risk. It’s a gamble, where sometimes you make big money and sometimes you get killed by hydras or agents of King Ronard. But with craft times directly dependent upon resale value, these crafts are gambles where sometimes you make the same amount of money you would have making night stands, and sometimes you get killed by your own poison or Clerics of Torm. Category:skills